McCain appointed to Ukraine reform advisory team headed by fugitive Georgian ex-leader

Georgia’s fugitive ex-president Mikhail Saakashvili and hawkish US Senator John McCain have been approved as members of the newly-formed International Advisory Group that will help Ukraine’s president in “conducting reforms.”

The list of members included in the advisory group mostly
includes current and former European politicians. Among them are
the German member of the European Parliament and the current
Chairman of the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs
Elmar Brok, Sweden's former Prime and Foreign Minister Carl
Bildt, former Prime Minister of Slovakia Mikulas Dzurinda, and
Lithuania’s former Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius.

Back in February Saakashvili was appointed as a non-staff adviser
to Poroshenko. The ex-Georgian president, who was in power from
2004 to 2013, faces numerous charges at home, including
embezzlement of over $5 million, corruption and brutality against
protesters during demonstrations in 2007. Georgia’s Chief
Prosecutor’s Office launched proceedings to indict Saakashvili
and place him on the international most wanted list, but Kiev
refused to hand over the fugitive president, despite an existing
extradition agreement between Ukraine and Georgia.

Saakashvili is known for his strong anti-Russian stance, which
garnered heavy US support. In August 2008 during his term in
office Georgia launched an offensive against South Ossetia,
killing dozens of civilians and Russian peacekeepers stationed in
the republic. Georgia’s shelling of Tskhinval prompted Russia to
conduct a military operation to fend off the offensive. Despite
Saakashvili’s claims that the conflict was “Russian
aggression,” the 2010 EU Independent Fact Finding Mission
Report ruled that Tbilisi was responsible for the attack.

Meanwhile Senator John McCain, for years spearheading the
anti-Russian and particularly anti-Putin crusade, said that while
he “would love to do anything” to help Ukraine, he has
not yet cleared his new appointment under the US Senate rules.

“I was asked to do it both by Ukraine and Saakashvili and I
said I would be inclined to do it but I said I needed to look at
all the nuances of it, whether it’s legal under our ethics and
all that kind of stuff,” McCain told BuzzFeed.

At the onset of the Ukraine's Maidan protests against former
president Viktor Yanukovich, McCain appeared in Kiev to support
the uprising that months later culminated in a coup.

“We ... want to make it clear to Russia and Vladimir Putin
that interference in the affairs of Ukraine is not acceptable to
the United States,” the US Senator told a crowd of some
200,000 anti-government protesters in the central square of
Ukraine’s capital.

Following the new Kiev authorities’ attempt to suppress dissent
in the east of the country and Crimea’s ascension into the
Russian Federation, McCain became the main engine of lobbying for
lethal arms supplies to Ukrainian forces to “defend
themselves” and Europe from “Russian aggression.”

“The Ukrainian people don’t want US or Western troops to
fight for them; they are simply asking for the right tools to
defend themselves and their country,” he said late last
month at a hearing on US security policy in Europe. “Russia’s
invasion and dismemberment of Ukraine should remind everyone of
the true nature of Putin’s ambitions and the fragility of peace
in Europe.”

McCain’s statements following the Minsk II ceasefire agreement
make it clear that peace in Ukraine is not something the hawkish
politician supports. Despite the general agreement that Minsk
Accords is the only way forward for a political resolution to the
crisis, McCain rejected the agreement as “solidifying the
gains of Russian aggression.”

In addition, the Senator is a strong supporter of the NATO
buildup on Russian borders. McCain insisted recently that the
Baltic allies should help secure eastern borders of the alliance
as they cannot “continue with business as usual”
claiming that Russia poses a “geopolitical challenge... to
our entire vision of Europe.”

McCain has also been hinting at starting a new nuclear arms race
with Russia. “Negotiating further strategic nuclear
reductions with Russia would be a dangerously naive non-starter
with the US Senate. It simply defies common sense to negotiate
nuclear reductions with Vladimir Putin,” he said last month
followingUS administration's
callfor further
strategic nuclear reductions.